Also of interest...in music studies

The Jazz Standards

by Ted Gioia (Oxford, $40)

As any fan knows, jazz makes frequent use of “what might be called a ‘hand-me-down’ repertoire,” said Will Friedwald in The Wall Street Journal. Yet often not even the performers know who wrote the standards they’re playing. Detailing the history of 252 jazz classics, critic and pianist Ted Gioia has created the first “authoritative guide to the basic contemporary jazz canon.” He’s “particularly good at explaining to the reader why certain songs catch on with musicians.”

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How Music Works

by David Byrne (McSweeney’s, $32)

David Byrne’s latest is “a textbook of sorts,” said Brian Gresko in TheAtlantic.com. The former Talking Heads front man doesn’t give fans much of what they’d want—stories about his life and career, or sustained insight into his creative process. Instead, he muses about how technologies alter song construction, how music is changed by listeners, and the impact of online distribution. The book “reads as a brilliant how-to guide for aspiring musicians,” but it’s too impersonal to be affecting.

MP3

by Jonathan Sterne (Duke, $25)

“There are no good arguments against the MP3, only sentimental ones in favor of alternatives,” said Hua Hsu in Slate.com. Seeking to put the history of the popular digital recording format in the broadest perspective, Jonathan Sterne moves quickly into “heady, philosophical questions on a different order than whether it’s okay to steal from Metallica.” Sterne is “a titan in the academic field of sound studies.” He can make you hear new themes in the progress of culture.

The Sounds of Capitalism

by Timothy D. Taylor (Univ. of Chicago, $35)

“It may seem like music is getting more commercial,” but that’s a misreading of history, said the Daily Mail (U.K.). In his history of advertising music, UCLA musicologist Timothy Taylor argues that mass-market corporations have been working to co-opt the power of popular music for more than a century. If you doubt they’ve succeeded, you haven’t thought deeply enough about the path from Carmen Miranda’s “Chiquita Banana” to Run DMC’s “My Adidas.”